Continuing the current trend for video games based upon ancient religious texts, El Shaddai offers up an exciting hack and slash adventure game that breaks from the mould in a host of ways by introducing as many new gameplay mechanics as it does strip down old ones. The result is a fresh experience that may be intimidating and confused in some respects, but it concentrates its efforts on streamlined gameplay mechanics and an amazingly high degree of visual polish to create a stunningly beautiful, if somewhat flawed, experiment in video game design.

The game gets off to a rocky start, which could easily make you think that you must have hit a bug and been launched a couple of chapters ahead. The first thing that the game does is to kick you off a cliff into a boss battle without bothering to tell you any controls, who you are, or why you should want this fellow dead. Luckily, it turns out that you are supposed to lose at this point because the game wants to teach you how to resurrect yourself after death (a skill you are going to need). It is as intimidating a start to a video game as you could imagine but before too long a clear mission is in front of you, one of God's weapons is in your hands, and it's time to go forth and purify.

From this point onwards the plot remains pointedly obscure; characters are mentioned casually, as if you read books on apocryphal history all the time. It is a shame that the plot is not introduced better from the start as by the end it does begin to make some kind of sense, despite itself, and even becomes vaguely interesting. The story, should you decide to attempt to follow it, puts you in the shoes of Enoch, a human who has been taken to heaven by God to work as librarian and now returned to earth on a quest to bind the souls of seven fallen angels. These angels have gained the ire of God by fornicating with the human population on earth and producing offspring (known as the Nephilim) who, through their own cannibalism, have become monstrous beings who threaten the very destruction of earth.

In gameplay terms this translates to Enoch battling through a tower, which the fallen angels have built to protect themselves, in a series of both 3D and 2D realms. The action constantly switches between combat and platforming, and is punctuated by a series of repeated boss encounters with the fallen angels themselves. Each of the seven angels has their own floor in the tower, each with its own distinctive style. The artistry put into the game is staggering, with the 2D platforming sections in particular including some amazingly fresh ideas. Some of these environments can even push the platforming into playing second fiddle to the awesome backdrops in which it takes place. This is represented quite literally in an early section, where both your protagonist and the platforms he is jumping between are silhouetted against a spectacular stained glass window. On other occasions the backgrounds can become part of the platforming itself, at one point seeing you ride a tsunami across what would otherwise be an insurmountable gap.

Other sections of the game, however, are drab and dull in comparison; the boss battles are particularly disappointing, occurring in simple rooms surrounded by invisible walls. To make things worse they are repeated ad infinitum and sometimes you are thrust into an encounter only to be taken out once a certain amount of your armour has been reduced. Even during "real" fights they can become a tiresome war of attrition that sees you whittle away their health slowly, once you have worked out the best times to attack, and which weapon to use. This is not helped by the absence of a health bar for your foe which means you have little idea of how much effect your attacks are having.

Platforming and boss battles only take up certain portions of the game of course, this is a hack and slash adventure game so there is a good deal of minion-based combat to work through. At first glance the combat seems disappointingly simplistic, with only one button for jump, one for attack and one for guard; there are no ridiculously-named, over-the-top attacks requiring long strings of button inputs here. There are still many different attacks available to use, but these are instead triggered by careful timing of your presses. For example, varying the speed at which you press the attack button, or holding it down for a while will each have a different effect, as will similar inputs whilst guarding or airborne. This makes the combat more streamlined and less fussy than the elders of its genre, by forcing you to become very good at fewer things, but it may not please experts of the genre.

The weaponry in El Shaddai is equally simple with only three options available during the game. Enoch begins with the Arch, which behaves as a quick sword; followed by the Gale, which is a ranged weapon and the most difficult to master; and lastly the Veil, which gives the user a high degree of defence but only slow, if powerful, attacks. Enoch can only carry one at a time during play so to switch you must pick one up or steal it from an enemy. Success in combat depends as much on careful choice of weapon as it does skill, as each will inflict a varying degree of damage against different enemies. This brings some tactics into play as it is wise to choose which enemy to fight first, to give you the opportunity to gain their weapon, before moving on to the rest of the pack. The problem with this set up is that sometimes you are left short on options and can easily end up with a weapon you do not want, or even no weapon at all.

The combat is also not helped by the game’s camera, which you cannot control yourself and will decide for itself what you need to be looking at. Combat almost always takes place in small arenas and there are often enemies just off screen who can attack you without you realising that they are there. Invisible walls also appear during combat that you are not made aware of. This means that, if you are close to one and try to jump or dodge away from an attack, you will simply jump or roll on the spot, making yourself extremely vulnerable in the process. All of these things do not ruin the game by any means, but they do make the combat unnecessarily frustrating by putting you at an unfair disadvantage.

El Shaddai's beauty may only be skin deep, but it manages to carry the game through to the end of what could otherwise have been an impenetrable mash-up of new ideas and gameplay mechanics. The gameplay may not advance a huge amount over the course of the game, and it can be needlessly frustrating at times, but it remains solid and focused on what it does best. Should it start to feel repetitive, then it gives you a chance to sit back and enjoy the simply astonishing variety of visuals on offer. With the environments shifting from an extravagant disco laser light show, to painterly watercolour backdrops, to bright and cutesy platforming sections, El Shaddai simply does not let up its artistic diarrhoea for even a second. Instead, it constantly surprises with each fresh style and change of pace to create a melting pot of ideas that may not be to everybody’s taste, but undeniably bucks the genre trend with a huge amount of style.

Accessibility Issues
1. Visibility
The visuals vary wildly during the game between all manner of styles, meaning you never need to deal with a particular kind of environment for very long. Some of these are clear and easy to move around in, but others are simply terrible. A few, in particular, see your protagonist as a silhouette, which can disappear into the background, forcing you to guess where he is. Most of the time there is also a strange film through which the action is seen, as if your TV screen is covered in dirt. This makes the visuals quite blurry and can be very disorientating at times, by making it difficult to judge distances properly.

There is no HUD, or indeed any information, on screen during play. Instead your health is given by the amount of armour that Enoch still wears and you can see what weapon he is holding in his hands. When you need to purify your weapon (which effectively functions as reloading) it is shown quite clearly by it turning from blue to red. There are many other cues given with colour changes but none of them involve changes between green and red, so colour blind people should not have any trouble with the game.

The start screen and in game menus are not written clearly. The text is white on a grey box on a background of pastel pinks and blues. The text is also often quite small and difficult to read.

2. Hearing
There are plenty of audio cues in the game, none of which are strictly necessary, but are very helpful even though they are accompanied by visual cues as well. In particular, one tells you when your armour has been reduced; it is not very clear just by looking at your protagonist how much you have left. Annoyingly, after you have completed the game through once, you are given the option to add a health gauge on to your screen for further play-throughs, making it much easier to judge your position. Why that option would not be there from the start escapes me.

3. Subtitles
All of the dialogue is subtitled but it is in a white serif font with a faint black outline and is un-boxed. It is often difficult and occasionally impossible to read, depending upon the background at the time. Not surprisingly the game is not closed captioned and there is never any indication of who is speaking. Sometimes the story continues during play, so it would be very difficult to read the subtitles at these points. Pertinent information is also given during boss fights and combat, which deaf gamers may not catch for the same reason.

4. Precision
During the platforming sections precise timing of jumps is very important. This is especially true towards the end of the game where the platforming gets much trickier. Timing is also crucial during combat to break your opponents' guard and pull off particular counter-attack moves, but on easier difficulty settings it is not necessary to use these moves.

Precision is otherwise not too important. The left analogue stick must be used to control the direction in which your protagonist moves and aims but this does not need to be done with too much accuracy.

There are no QTEs in the game but there is plenty of button mashing. This brings you back to life when you lose all of your armour if you mash enough buttons within the allotted time. Each time you die you have less time to mash enough buttons meaning it gets increasingly difficult to do.

5. Controls
The controls are the one positive in the game’s accessibility, as it has partially customisable controls and there are not a huge number of buttons needed to play. Enoch is controlled with just one analogue stick, as the camera is fixed, and only one button is needed for each of: attack, jump, purify and guard. Some actions require you to press several of these buttons at once, for example, holding down guard and pressing attack.

It is possible to change button inputs for these four actions between any of the face buttons and shoulder keys, but you are not allowed to use the directional keys. You are also not allowed to change movement to the right analogue stick but must use the left. This means it is impossible to play with one hand.

6. Difficulty
There are two difficulty settings available on starting the game, Easy and Normal, with more made available on completion of the game. Gameplay is not as difficult to manage as in, say, Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, as there are far fewer possible combos to learn; the timing of your attacks and your strategy are more important than the execution of combos.

The main problem with the difficulty level is the inability to drop down a level during a game. If you begin to find it too difficult and want to drop to the easy level, your only option is to start a game from scratch.

The game does allow you to restart after death by resurrecting yourself. This is done by button mashing as much as possible within a time limit. This gets more difficult to do each time but allows you to keep trying rather than putting you back to a checkpoint. In real terms, however, it simply means that your health bar is as long as your patience and fingers can muster.

For the most part the platforming in the game is pretty straightforward. Early on it is mostly in 2D and quite forgiving. Later on, however, the platforming gets much more difficult. A few sections in particular are in 3D, meaning judging distances is nigh on impossible, bringing a healthy portion of luck into your success. If you miss a jump you are put back to a checkpoint a few seconds before and you only lose a minimal amount of health, so you can keep trying until death eventually pushes you further back. Annoyingly, checkpoints during combat can be much further apart, and can force you to sit through un-skippable mid-boss cut scenes repeatedly.

Summary
El Shaddai fails in almost every respect in terms of accessibility. Customisable controls on a console game are like gold-dust, so credit has to be given to the developers for that, but that is about the only positive I can think of. From visuals that obscure your view, to unreadable subtitles, to unchangeable difficulty levels, to button mashing, the game just constantly falls flat on its pretty face.